Taughannock Falls

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Yves Smith has one of the best summations I've ever read of what's broken in our hyper-financialized, global capitalist world system in today's NakedCapitalism:

There’s an opportunity in Spain, let’s say, to take advantage of cheap labor and prices. Money flows in, builds huge capacity, then flows out as soon as it finds better opportunity elsewhere. What’s left behind? The Spanish in a crashed economy, and in a world in which the holders of their debt (German bankers et al) are using the EU (remember, capture of government) to make sure that creditors are made whole at the expense of whole populations.
Kind of like how Walmart comes into a town, builds a huge store, drives all the other retailers out of business, then leaves as soon as the low-wage-earners in that town can’t keep the store more profitable than other stores in the state.
What’s left? The wreck of an economy. Where’s the money? In the pockets of the Walton family, ‘natch. Win-win for someone (but not for you).
Your “economic crisis” is just their “cost of doing business”
Keep in mind, the purpose of unrestricted “free trade” is to advantage the holders of capital over everyone else on the planet. Great wealth insulates these men and women from crises, so even global economic crisis is just the externalized price (that we pay) for their wealth extraction enterprise — just like a burdened health care system is the externalized price (that we pay) for wealth extraction by billionaire owners of tobacco companies from the constant stream of lung cancer patients.
What’s “a world in constant crisis” to them? Just the cost of doing business. Nothing personal. It’s just business.

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/free-trade-and-unrestricted-capital-flow-how-billionaires-get-rich-and-destroy-the-rest-of-us.html#jcyaWAsbUh0igVfC.99
How can the 99.9% of us who don't benefit from this system push back? We have to take a lesson from our Corporate Overlords. Oppression, destruction, and exploitation isn't limited by national borders one whit. Our resistance to this oppression must also be without borders-- and every bit as relentless as the predations of the zombies who now think they have begun a thousand year Reich of global corporate fascism.